Camiseteria.com - Crowdsourced Fashion Design

Crowdsourcing is not a new buzzword - think: Quora, Top Coder, Crowdspring- but it is unique in e-commerce in Brazil. When I was in Rio de Janeiro recently I paid a visit to the 6-year old company's art-clad offices. The founder and CEO, Fabio Seixas, told me the top shirt designers were invited to decorate their walls.

Camiseteria's business model relies on designers to submit ideas for t-shirts. Then, its customers vote to select the designs the company will actually manufacture and sell. The designer gets paid 1,300 reais if the shirt is selected. Since inception, the site has received 35,000 t-shirt designs and, so far, has only selected around 800 - so they are pretty choosy. The company is currently selling 5000-6000 shirts per month, with big jumps happening during the holidays. The shirts's cost ranges from 33-69 reais and they keep around 200 in stock at any one time.

They are in good company with similar business models in the US - Threadless, CafePress, Spreadshirt. Best of luck to Fabio and his team.

Examples of the office art work

Camiseteria team

Example of their stock

P.S. The last few weeks have been busy for Brazil VCs.  I recently saw a tweet from a NYC entrepreneur that said "Opening a VC office in Brazil is the new opening a VC office in New York."  Here's the latest: 

1) US media giant, Liberty Media, acquired a 5% stake in Ideiasnet.  

2) Intel Capital announced that it had made two investments in Brazil (Coquelux, Fashion.me) and expanded its Sao Paulo team to four people.  

3) BV Capital and Redpoint announced they had formed a joint fund to invest in Brazil.